Myanmar holds 106 suspected Rohingya Muslims aboard boat
YANGON (Reuters) — Myanmar immigration authorities detained more than 100 suspected Rohingya Muslims aboard a boat off Yangon yesterday, officials said, raising fears of a fresh wave of dangerous voyages after a 2015 crackdown on people smugglers.
The boat carrying 106 people was stopped in the early morning some 30 km south of Myanmar’s largest city and police were on the way to investigate, Kyaw Htay, an immigration officer from Kyauktan township, told
Reuters by phone. “It’s possible that they are from Rakhine. Like in previous years, it is possible they are Bengali from Rakhine,” Kyaw Htay said.
Many people in Buddhist-majority Myanmar refer to the Rohingya as “Bengali,” implying they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Myanmar does not consider the Rohingya a native ethnic group.
More than 700,000 Rohingya fled a sweeping army crackdown in Myanmar’s Rakhine state last year, according to United Nations agencies. The Rohingya say soldiers and local Buddhists massacred families, burned hundreds of villages, and carried out gang rapes. UN-mandated investigators have accused the Myanmar army of “genocidal intent” and ethnic cleansing.
Myanmar denies almost all of the allegations, saying security forces were battling terrorists. Attacks by Rohingya insurgents calling themselves the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army preceded the crackdown. Officials and aid workers told
Reuters last week that dozens of Rohingya in Myanmar and Bangladesh had boarded boats to try to reach Malaysia in recent weeks after the end of the monsoon rains in early October.
Aye Mya Mya Myo, a lower house lawmaker for Aung San Suu Kyi’s ruling National League for Democracy party from Kyauktan, posted pictures of a rickety boat crammed with women wearing headscarves, men and children on Facebook.